The Negative Side of Too Much of Information

The global economy continues to become more and more information and knowledge based economy. Availability of the Internet and the ever increasing digital penetration has impacted the way the educated minds think, act and articulate. On one hand, easy availability of data has made life simple. Unlike the hardcopies, softcopies and internet provide us the luxury to use keywords to search relevant information in shorter time with higher efficiency. Some of the Internet sites provide the additional luxury to search as per relevancy or as per chronology. However, all these advantages have also brought some issues of concern for the intellectual world.

The ability to think, imagine and conceptualize has been one of the biggest victims of the abundance of information at a very low price. Gone those days when students use to think, discuss, analyse concepts in order to achieve deeper insight into any issue. Googling out has become the norm of the day. Let it be a subjective issue that requires some angle of thinking, brainstorming, deliberation etc., many young minds to prefer googling it in the Internet and form their opinion on the basis of 2-3 initial search results thrown out by the search engine. Unfortunately, most of the initial results of any Internet based search engine are usually paid websites.

Many intellectuals and academicians have started venting out their concern on the issue. Some academicians are of the opinion that the Internet has increased the volume of the content they used to receive per assignment they ask to students, but the quality has dipped substantially. Similarly, many industry professionals also complain about the lack of conceptual understanding of the students they interview for jobs. Usually, the first answer to any case situation based question involving critical thinking is “Am I allowed to use Google” or “I will check this in Google”.

No doubt there is nothing wrong in googling out for information. The problem lies in not utilizing the power of human brain. Consequently, the outcome of any thought process based on borrowed outcome already available in the Internet prevents out-of-the-box thinking. And too much of in-box thinking not only hampers mental development of human beings, but also prevents society to draw benefits from more innovations in both quantity and quality terms.